July 26, 2010

Big things are happening on Syfy's "Eureka," which revealed a time-shifting plot when its fourth season began earlier this month.

At Comic-Con, I spoke to the executive producers of the show, Bruce Miller and Jaime Paglia, about the serious consequences of that change to the show's dynamics (the main characters were shifted into 1947, and when they returned to 2010, their town and lives were notably different).

In the video interview below, they also spoke about the casting of Felicia Day and Wil Wheaton in the second half of the show's fourth season (the episodes featuring both Wheaton and Day, who had announced their "Eureka" episodes just hours earlier at a panel for "The Guild," will air early next year).

I also spoke with James Callis, who joined the show in Season 4 as the mysterious Dr. Grant, who traveled from his time frame, 1947, to 2010. As you no doubt know, Callis played Gaius Baltar on "Battlestar Galactica," and in the video clip below, he talked about the challenges of doing an American accent. He was told to study Cary Grant, and he also watched '40s movies to prepare for the role.

"Everyone looks, as far as I can work out, like a gangster" and their accents match, Callis says in the video below. He recalls thinking, "'I really want to have a go at that," and liked the "different sensibility" of the post-war era.

The interesting thing about Grant is that his journey is "so much more difficult" in 2010 because he knows no one and has no connections. "He's searching for something to catch on to," Callis said.

In the next few episodes, Miller said, secrets about Grant will be revealed and "he may have a bigger footprint in 2010 than we realized."

As for Day, when the second half of the season airs in early 2011, she'll play a "very eccentric scientist, someone who was invited to be at Eureka but turned it down," Paglia said.

"She's famous for that," Miller added. "She has no governor between her brain and her mouth." She's brought in to consult on a problem and Day's character and the character played by Wheaton, who will appear in several episodes, will be involved in a love triangle with a "Eureka" regular. The producers wouldn't say who it is, but I'd bet money that it's Fargo.

Dr. Allison Blake (who's played by Salli Richardson-Whitfield) has a big choice to make regarding the altered timeline; in it, Fargo found that he was head of the town's secret research facility, Global Dynamics, Sheriff Jack Carter's ex-girlfriend was still around and Blake's son was not autistic.

"It gives me a chance to get out of the office, I'm not stuck there. You get to really see me with my children, so it softens her," Richardson-Whitfield said in the interview below.

"Carter and I get to run around again together, and that's how we started [in earlier seasons] and we enjoy that banter. It brings us back to how we started, but at the same time, it opens up a new thing for us."

Blake and Carter have been attracted to each other forever on the show, and Richardson-Whitfield said that that aspect of "Eureka" -- which draws on the pleasing chemistry she has with Colin Ferguson, who plays Carter -- may come to the fore this season.

"They haven't told us everything, but they're definitely trying to bring some of that love in," she said. And she couldn't be specific, but she added that in the second half of "Eureka's" season, she'll get "some of the hardest stuff I've ever had to do." She'll also direct the 15th episode of the season.

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